Friday, 30 November 2012

Firstly, he draws a clear distinction between a news outlet which claims to provide trusted reporting and the internet in general, where there is no implied trust (although Leveson uses the term ethical rather than trusted, which in this particular case I believe are interchangeable as trust in news output flows from ethical journalism).

Chapter 7, section 3.2:

"... the internet does not claim to operate by any particular ethical standards, still less high ones. Some have called it a ‘wild west’ but I would prefer to use the term ‘ethical vacuum’. This is not to say for one moment that everything on the internet is therefore unethical. That would be a gross mischaracterisation of the work of very many bloggers and websites which should rightly and fairly be characterised as valuable and professional. The point I am making is a more modest one, namely that the internet does not claim to operate by express ethical standards, so that bloggers and others may, if they choose, act with impunity."

Leveson doesn't say this but there is also a jurisdiction issue online. It's not strictly true that bloggers may act with impunity if based in the UK, as there's always the possibility they will be traced using existing legal instruments and prosecuted or face civil proceedings for libel or privacy breach.

7.3.3:

"The press, on the other hand, does claim to operate by and adhere to an ethical code of conduct. Publishers of newspapers will be (or, at least, are far more likely to be) far more heavily resourced than most, if not all, bloggers and websites that report news (as opposed to search engines that direct those on line to different sites). Newspapers, through whichever medium they are delivered, purport to offer a quality product in all senses of that term."

Secondly, he draws a distinction between content being available (to those who search out such information) and being actively promoted, e.g. on the front page of a tabloid:

7.3.4:

"There is a qualitative difference between photographs being available online and being displayed, or blazoned, on the front page of a newspaper such as The Sun. The fact of publication in a mass circulation newspaper multiplies and magnifies the intrusion, not simply because more people will be viewing the images, but also because more people will be talking about them. Thus, the fact of publication inflates the apparent newsworthiness of the photographs by placing them more firmly within the public domain and at the top of the news agenda."

This I feel is a crucial point often overlooked when talking about privacy and defamation in an online context. Just because someone tweeted something doesn't mean anyone read it.

Having said all this I do feel Leveson is brushing over the effect of e.g. high profile tweeters, but it takes time and patience to feed an elephant.

Leveson's voluntary body paradox. There are benefits for joining and, through exemplary damages and court cost arrangements, potentially hefty punishments for not joining.

Sitting at the heart of all these seemingly paradoxical positions is one reality: we do not have, today, a press that is entirely free from all state control.

And the shackles of privacy and libel law would become far more restrictive should we have an effective enforcement regime for all.

Whether or not we want or need privacy and defamation rights enshrined in law is itself a question I can't answer without tying myself in knots.

But we have them today.

Day-to-day enforcement is through the civil court, and because the judiciary is independent of the state, some argue there is no "state control" of the press.

And here is the problem at the core of Leveson: the state has granted us all a right of privacy and a right to defend our reputation, yet today we don't allhave access to defend these rights due to the cost of access to the civil courts and the threat of being bankrupted by the opposing side's costs should we lose.

So Leveson is proposing a tribunal of sorts that should offer a means of redress for anyone wronged by the press without having to resort to a court.

Whilst Leveson conveniently (and thankfully) ignored the far more complex online questions - complex because we all become publishers and potential victims of intrusion - defamation and privacy are becoming increasingly important rights for everyone.

Particularly victims of crime and those falsely accused of a crime, who can suffer at the hands of the press and, the latter at least, at the hands of online publishers too.

Inevitably any such tribunal will face the accusation that it is restricting a free press unless the body is run entirely by the free press; which is where we were with the "toothless" and "ineffective" Press Complaints Commission.

Full circle.

A war by proxy on privacy rights and smaller publications

However you analyse it, attacking Leveson's findings is a war by proxy against effective redress for privacy violations and defamation for the less wealthy.

We need to have this debate now. A debate about privacy and defamation rights and access to redress.

It upsets me to hear politicians arguing in parliament that newspapers should be prevented from "printing rubbish" as behind such words seemingly in the public interest lies a desire to control the output of the press in some way that is quite frankly unacceptable.

And it upsets me to see powerful publishers - the country's biggest - rubbishing the debate before its already started because there's another power play bubbling under the surface. Protection of the old media's established position against smaller publishers and online sources.

Supporting the status quo leaves questions of privacy and libel in the sole care of the court. And this leaves smaller publications disproportionately affected by the threat of high court costs - even when defending well-founded and valid criticism of powerful people.

I'm absolutely convinced that dominance and monopoly is a major contributing factor to the collusion, corruption and unethical workplace behaviour that became normalised in a small but notable section of the tabloid press. A small section that commandeered a very large audience.

The "guardians of democracy" became complicit in the subversion of democracy. But not all the "guardians", and this is crucial because there won't be a perfect solution - there'll be a least-worst option - and we might have to put up with such abuses as an unavoidable side effect of the benefit of a free press.

We need plurality but we also need large, powerful news outlets capable of going where smaller organisations cannot afford or find the balls to go.

I see no clear answers. But perhaps more worrying I see very little honest debate.

I sympathise with much of what David Cameron said yesterday, yet he spent half his time at the dispatch box trumpeting the questionable fact that Leveson had exonerated him and his then media minister of collusion in the Murdoch affair. The rest of the time he merely deflected, rather than answered, his critics.

Grossly unfair generalisations and simplistic statements flowed back from the opposition benches.

Anyone following the debate would be lead to believe we are a country void of honest journalism; when in fact we have today a free press, one of the freest in the world - and yes that is a considered opinion - which consistently exposes issues in the public interest and, tabloids aside, generally behaves itself.

And yes it's not perfect. The MPs' expenses scandal was exposed. Arms to Iraq was exposed. Yet neither Jimmy Savile nor Cyril Smith were exposed; and I suspect the true scale of corruption at the heart of the North Wales child abuse scandal and other pockets of localised corruption have so far evaded press scrutiny.

We need a debate not about press abuses but about privacy, defamation and redress.

A debate that is focussed on protecting freedom, properly balancing the "freedom to" publish against the public's right of a "freedom from" intrusion.

Past debates on privacy and defamation have in my view been steered by vested interests towards the concerns of the powerful in defending their own reputation and privacy, hence why court costs are rarely seen as a problem and why corporations have defamation and some privacy rights.

Yet "freedom from" protection in a free society should be aimed primarily at protecting the vulnerable against the strong; not the powerful against the public, for the powerful should use their platform to defend themselves, not fall back to laws which encumber free and open discussion.

I imagine it's hard for an MP, the protection of whose image and reputation is vital to his or her chances of re-election, to see privacy and libel from the perspective of an ordinary person wronged in the press or defamed on Facebook, whilst acknowledging their own rights as an elected representative must necessarily be curtailed to facilitate open political debate in a democracy, but I hope one day this debate will take place.

Can we draw clear lines to weed-out unacceptable abuses, to provide strong but well-defined protection, a "freedom from", without impinging too far on free speech - a "freedom to"?

Can we have effective privacy and defamation laws that protect all regardless of ability to pay without creating a monster which eventually shackles the free press? I genuinely don't know the answer.

But the timing of the deal suggests to me the British government had a welcome hand in bringing the case to a relatively speedy resolution (18 months, compared to the ten years Gary McKinnon remained in legal limbo).

7th November: Obama is re-elected, ending months of political uncertainty in Washington. Note in his 2nd and final term, Obama is no longer fighting for campaign dollars from traditional Democrat supporters like the Hollywood movie studios.

21st November: Attorney General Eric Holder visits UK on a charm offensive. Accepts he was "disappointed" but denies saying he felt "completely screwed" re McKinnon in a Radio 4 Today interview.

Whilst I tweeted the BBC's Sarah Montague that she should have asked about O'Dwyer, Eric Holder trotted off for tea and biscuits with Theresa May.

Just one week later..

28th November: The extradition of Richard O'Dwyer, hugely unpopular amongst British voters according to a YouGov survey last June, is dropped.

Just 9% of respondents thought O'Dwyer should be extradited, whilst 46% believed he should not be prosecuted at all. 26% thought he should be tried in the UK.

Crucially for Theresa May, the same poll showed even more Conservative voters (33%) thought he should be tried in the UK, with 45% believing he should not face prosecution at all.

It's well known international diplomacy is mostly about positioning and face-saving so it's hardly surprising the British government, if it did have a hand in this very welcome outcome, is staying quiet.

But it's a shame for democracy that we don't have a bit of transparency on the positions adopted by our elected representatives.

The US studios take something home from the Deferred Prosecution Deal struck with O'Dwyer - the press hysteria over a student potentially being shipped abroad as punishment for serving films from his Sheffield flat has almost certainly made a whole generation wary of crossing the big guns who control the world's supply of western music and film.

Whether or not Theresa May did have a hand in halting the extradition in reality there's not going to be another O'Dwyer.

The US prosecution authorities walked naively into a political minefield.

Whilst the Hollywood studios lapped up the publicity as a massive, free anti-piracy commercial carrying a potent warning, I doubt Washington ever envisaged the burgeoning publicity and political backlash in Britain around O'Dwyer - nor in New Zealand for Kim Dotcom.

The message sent back across the Atlantic is simple: the UK/US extradition deal is a political hot potato in Westminster. Any attempt to abuse the process to nab petty criminals who've never set foot in the US may seriously hinder future attempts to ship terrorists, rapists and murderers back to the US.

Monday, 26 November 2012

The online signal-to-noise ratio is approaching 1:∞ and some of the nonsense repeated by blog after blog gets so tiresome I can't believe anything online gets taken seriously any more.

Or maybe the massive increase in the noise bed is just all part of a disinformationcover-up conspiracy??!

Either way readers need to get a bit more discerning in a world where anyone can publish anything.

Here's my top 5 of the dodgiest crap cropping up over and over again, no matter what the conspiracy is.

5. Documents snatched by police/MI5 or other shady intruder

Yes it's convenient for your alleged foe that your cache of documents was disappeared. But it's also convenient for your conspiracy you were too lazy or stupid to take precautions.

You're bright enough to spot the value of the evidence you hold but not clever enough to work a photocopier and find a hidey-hole?

Since 1987 you could walk into most local shops and libraries and copy away without raising an eyebrow. Deposit said copy with a friend, a solicitor - in the event of my death, etc, etc.

There's even fewer excuses today. Scan them onto a USB stick or set an email to go out in the event of your death from ifidie.org or similar.

4. The unnamed military/political/intelligence insider

When a newspaper runs a story from an unnamed insider you can bet your life at least one other person - a senior editor at the paper - thoroughly checked the reporter's notes and that publication has been discussed at the highest level. Papers hate running important stories with unnamed sources.

Why? Because it's so bloody easy to invent secret sources to back up any story. Check The Wire Season 5 for a picture penned by journalist David Simon.

And just assuming the person stepping out of the shadows to tip you off does exist, and he or she is actually affiliated to MI5 or whatever... How do you know they're not just yanking your chain? Leading me on to...

3. The story that mainstream media can't/is too scared to publish (or is subject to a D-Notice)

Why did your unnamed military/political/intelligence insider come to you and your crappy little blog and not the mainstream media? (Yes, yes... I've had people leak stuff to me - but it's hardly been explosive. Falls into the category: too niche for mainstream media).

Wait a minute, a D-Notice you say? The D-notice system, being voluntary and known as DA-Notices since 1993. Whilst I'm sure the D-Notice system has been abused in the past there's little hard evidence; which is weird, considering journalists are a talkative bunch.

So the question remains: why feed this ground-breaking story to your crappy little blog?

2. Person X is linked to person Y

Take one person who maybe did die in suspicious circumstances or has proven dodgy connections, person X. Combine with the person you want to implicate, person Y. Add to Google. Discover the wife of the cousin of person Ysat on some school or charitable board with person X. Bingo!

"Person Y, who has proven links to disgraced/jailed/dodgy person X..."

Sometimes the connection is even more tenuous, like both living in Hampshire.

Yes, the bulk of evidence offered up by conspiracy theorists still plays to that most basic of human emotions: social rejection. A secret society that you'll never be able to join. They must be up to no good. How very dare they gang together behind closed doors with all their weird rituals? They must be murdering children and orchestrating world domination!

One true fact I did uncover trawling the web of conspiracy. Many of the bloggers and "truth-seekers" quite conveniently have a book for sale through the marvels of self-publishing. How convenient. Sure signs of a conspiracy if you ask me!

There are two questions regarding action on alcohol abuse. Should the government act to artificially raise the price of alcohol and should it do this through duty (taxation) or setting a minimum price per unit.

I don't much care for the ideological debate about whether the government should act; but if it does intend to act, is minimum price setting the right way forward?

I have a major concern about how the wholesale market will work. In a free market there is no legal distinction between someone who sells to an end user (retailer) and someone who sells to other traders (wholesaler).

Whilst many wholesalers erect, for various reasons, artificial barriers, e.g. only admitting customers who can prove they are working on behalf of a vat-registered entity; there is nothing in law to prevent a member of public buying direct from a wholesaler.

Nor is there anything to prevent a retailer buying discounted goods from another retailer and selling themselves at profit (although again there are sometimes attempts to prevent this by the retailer).

It's the free market. We are free to buy and free to sell.

So if a minimum price per unit for alcohol is set, will this also apply to wholesalers? And breweries?

It's an important question, because either way it really messes up the economy. If it does apply to all sales, then there will need to be a mark-up each time the alcohol is traded. A 45p minimum unit price could easily reach 60p at retail.

For this reason small shops who can't afford to buy direct from the brewery will be disproportionately affected (supermarket chains rarely if ever buy from wholesalers).

If it doesn't apply to wholesale then what's to stop those of us with access to a wholesaler bulk-buying cheaper alcohol for personal use? In fact wholesalers could be in for a cash bonanza.

Whilst officially they don't like members of the public shopping there, secretly it's positively encouraged. Cash is cash. Someone once told me the only reason they have membership requirements is because the manufacturers insist on it in order to qualify for huge buyer discounts.

Buying in bulk from wholesalers will encourage stockpiling, and this is known to be bad for health. I haven't got references (sorry) but a Swedish researcher once told me experience in Sweden where shops were banned from selling alcohol at weekends was that people stockpiled on Friday, over-stocked for fear of running out, yet invariably drank all they bought.

And of course many will be encouraged to illegally resell wholesale alcohol if the profits available made up for the risks of getting caught. After all, who's going to dob in the guy selling 4-packs down the Crown that *didn't* fall off the back of a lorry?

I can see why the government favours minimal pricing over taxation - the middle classes don't want to see a £9.99 bottle of Cab Sauv rise in order to hike the price of Buckfast and Tennent's Super.

But I seriously wonder if this well-intended move will either do little for public health (maybe encourage home brewing too?) or cause a major headache for the alcohol trade.

There is a whiff of conspiracy in the London offices of global tech giants.

Policy advisers - senior guys - from several companies have in the past assured me over the years they are taking a more robust line internally towards protecting free speech online than they're prepared to admit in public.

On the other hand it's reassuring that many in tech, at all levels, are quietly working behind the scenes to defend freedom and human rights.

Or is it?

Will the duplicity, secret deal-making and lack of transparency over the "corporate line" end up threatening democracy?

And that's without considering the international angle - how the "corporate line" for China sits with the ethics and values of a company headquartered at the home of the first amendment.

~

Take the recent Twitterstorm over McAlpine libel madness. Watching conversations on Twitter, blogs, etc I saw the beginnings of a conspiracy emerge along the lines of (not verbatim as I didn't capture logs):

"Twitter are about to strike a deal with McAlpine's lawyers as soon as the Met Police investigation gets underway..."

"No they're not, a friend actually works for Twitter, they're going to do all they can to stop this""Someone inside Twitter is on our side, they suspended that account for spreading unhelpful disinformation"
Of course the above is probably nothing more than idle speculation, but it did make me wonder whether the IT community would become tomorrow's "in club" to fear.

After all, the sysadmins at two of the companies I previously had association with were incredibly well-informed when it came to company gossip - on account of them reading my and presumably others' files and emails.

I established this by laying traps, sending private links to redirectors I controlled and checking when they were being accessed; plus, when possible, checking the "last access" time-stamp on my mailbox. In one case many years ago I overheard a sysadmin telling a joke I'd just sent to two colleagues via email.

~

History has shown those who control a useful commodity become powerful.

The high priests of ancient Egypt controlled your spiritual destiny. Few questioned why when they suggested you must be buried with your most valuable possessions, at a location where only they knew...

Biblical "money-changers" were the early bankers and became powerful through controlling the supply of money.

And as the law became more pervasive and important to all sections of society, the lawyers who understood the complex instruments became powerful as the gatekeepers to justice (for all who could afford their fees).

Now data, or connected data, has rapidly become a commodity vital to us all. Our social lives lived out through Facebook, our entertainment through video download and our daily business conducted online.

One challenge for the future, as well as ensuring no one company or nation controls the majority of internet communications, will be to prevent those who understand the complex domain becoming the gatekeepers in order to subvert the power for their own gain.

Preventing rogue employees dipping into the data, playing their own power games on users whose accounts they control, etc, is challenge enough. But here technology can solve technology's problem through end-end-encryption, access controls, logs and safeguards to detect anomalous access patters.

The other challenge will be to ensure the minority with the skills to understand connected data systems - and it will always be a minority - is a sizeable and diverse minority and not one which closes ranks and forms shady select groups to profit from their access and cover each other's back.

The challenge is to ensure that freedom remains at the heart of the online agenda, and also in the heart of those who have become the gatekeepers to our data.

Thursday, 22 November 2012

One of the websites I've been keeping an eye on as part of my reporting of the McAlpine saga and my series on how rumour, fact and falsehood spread online (1, 2, 3) has been de-indexed from Google UK; and this is most likely the result of a court order (injunction), as I will explain.

"In response to a legal requested submitted to Google,
we have removed 1 result(s) from this page."
Notice on Google.co.uk this morning

The website is still available when searching from overseas locations using Google.com.

For very obvious reasons in the current climate I will not say more about the website in question than I need in order to report the significance. The website makes several serious allegations about UK politicians relating to events over a decade ago.

For full clarity there is no evidence to suggest the removal has anything to do with Lord McAlpine or his legal team, as the website mentions several other politicians.

To those not familiar with Google's stance on free speech this might not be surprising, given the recent furore over false identification.

False allegations of the most serious nature have elicited an emotional response - from both sides of the debate.

Even some free speech advocates are wrestling right now with the question of whether some "regulation" (for want of a better word) might be necessary, whilst others are arguing that cover-ups will continue whilst the establishment continues to maintain a grip on communications.

That said, I have it on extremely good authority from multiple high level sources within Google that the company does not take down defamatory content lightly.

"Normally, in the UK, that would require a court order" said one of my contacts.

This raises the likelihood that there is at least one court injunction in place preventing allegations being made about one or more of the people mentioned on the website in question.

From Google's own Transparency Report, over 80% of UK take-downs for defamation in the last 2 years stemmed from a court order, the rest from "Executive, Police, etc":

It is not thought that Google will remove defamatory content merely on application from the subject or the subject's lawyer, without a court order; therefore it's reasonable to believe either a court order exists (>80% probability, based on the stats), or the request originated from the police or the security services (<.20% probability).

The above stats are for requests, not take-downs. Similar statistics are not available filtered by compliance. Google's take-down ratio is around 61% as of this summer so it's highly likely the ratio of court orders to police, etc requests for content actually taken down is higher than 80%.

Google have so far taken a firm line with requests from UK police in the absence of a court order, highlighting (under United Kingdom section):

"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 14 search results for linking to sites that criticise the police and claim individuals were involved in obscuring crimes. We did not remove content in response to this request. In addition, we received a request from another local law enforcement agency to remove a YouTube video for criticising the agency of racism. We did not remove content in response to this request.

The number of content removal requests we received increased by 98% compared to the previous reporting period."

In any case we may soon be able to view the actual order at some point due to Google's participation in the Chilling Effects project.

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Not content with a BBC apology, damages, resignation of its Director General; ongoing attempts to extract damages from ITV for a flash of a card that anyone without specialist software and an inkling what to expect on the card could read; targeted action against several high profile tweeters and mass action against thousands more...

It was reported today that Lord McAlpine's lawyers have approached the Met Police with a view to making a criminal complaint.

If you want the legal ins-and-outs of criminal malicious communications try David Allen Green.

But it's also interesting to look behind this complaint at what might be happening.

There's two schools of thought. @Syn0nymph has had some interesting observations to date and he speculates that a criminal complaint will make it easier to extract user information from Twitter than through the civil courts.

"Earlier in the week a spokeswoman for Twitter in the U.K. pointed out the company’s statement on requests for personal information:

“U.S. law authorizes Twitter to respond to requests for user information from foreign law enforcement agencies that are issued via U.S. court either by way of a mutual legal assistance treaty or a letter rogatory. It is our policy to respond to such U.S. court ordered requests when properly served.”

However I have noticed through keeping an eye on certain noisy quarters of the internet that McAlpine's attempts to rein-in Twitter have created a pretty awful backlash.

Not quite the Streisand Effect but a degree of anger and rage at perceived injustice and cover-ups in general in relation to child abuse inquiries.

I'm wondering whether McAlpine's approach to the Met Police might actually be in relation to the strong abuse and re-statement of serious allegations by a minority online.

Obviously personal attacks can't be condoned but I can't help feel that the best way to put this and so many other rumours doing the rounds to bed is not criminal action against the angry mob but a wide-ranging inquiry into historical mistreatment of children in care and a historical unwillingness for police to investigate allegations at the time.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

No-one gets off a murder charge just because they thought it was legal to shoot a Welshman with a longbow in the city of Chester.

But what happens when laws get so complex that the vast majority of people genuinely have no grasp of what they can and cannot do or say?

What happens when laws are so far removed from natural concepts of justice and fairness that the vast majority of the population have no idea that such a law even exists?

What happens is this. We create barriers and social divides that alter the way that the public participate in mass media such as Twitter and Facebook; and this, ultimately, leads to the de-democratisation of what is inherently a democratic medium where each participant starts on a relatively level playing field.

Let's take some recent examples.

Libel

The basic principle is actually well aligned to principles of natural justice. We should expect everyone to understand that it is simply wrong, morally and legally, to smear someone without proof.

Especially of serious crimes such as child abuse - smears that can lead to vigilante attacks and fundamentally alter lives.

But there are genuine areas where I'd guess that well over 50% of the population are understandably confused. E.g. if you retweet, like or share a libellous post.

On one hand yes, it's clear the person doing this is contributing to the spread of a lie. On the other hand though, especially on Twitter, it's useful to retweet someone who you don't agree with just to show that person A is making a dumb statement.

Where the law gets even more unfathomable is in relation to innuendo and other "mischief". Say you tweet the name of a person without context, in the hope of starting a trend that will provide the missing piece in a libellous jigsaw.

You might know a bit about libel law. You might check your "publication" - your tweet - for correctness. It might simply ask why a person's name is being mentioned. On its own you might be sure that your tweet is not, as the lawyers say, "actionable".

Injunctions and court orders

Other cases could put a tweeter in the dock for mentioning something that is subject to a court injunction, without actually being served by the court or even aware of the existence of the order.

One recent case put the name of a child in the public domain in order to find that child. An order was subsequently imposed to prevent further reporting of the name in order to protect the child.

Now, journalists and those familiar with the law in relation to media reporting see it as obvious that a child would be protected in this way. And privacy advocates argue it is right that privacy should be protected wherever there is no public interest to use a child - or anyone's - name in a public forum.

But the general public are understandably gob-smacked to find that someone's name previously plastered across the media now can't be uttered on Twitter or Facebook on penalty of a £5,000 fine.

Malicious Communications
Even legal commentators are surprised at recent legal action in the UK against people posting things online that others find offensive.

There is a worrying and growing list of cases where people have mocked the dead, particularly dead children and soldiers to make a joke or a political statement, and found themselves with a criminal conviction and in at least one case behind bars.

There is much to say on this in other contexts but I'll stop at a simple note in this post.

Conclusion

Conscientious citizens are understandably becoming wary about the public statements they make.

On one hand this is seen as a good thing. Some commentators are taking a rather simplistic line that the online world will be better if everyone thought before tweeting.

And a nudge in the right direction - there is a consequence for each of your actions - can't be a bad thing.

But this becomes a problem if the nudge becomes a shove so hard it dissuades people from participating in the debate.

When a conscientious majority are dissuaded form participating because the rules are unfathomable to mere mortals, the online debate will be steered by a minority.

On Channel 4 news last night a studio guest actually suggested it wouldn't be a bad thing if people just used Twitter to discuss life in general without, presumably, the political debate.

This made me fume, my wife will testify to the huffing.

The internet has the capacity to change the evolution of the human race in two ways. In science and technology, through the sharing of ideas and developments instantaneously throughout the world; and in politics, where the news agenda is no-longer the sole preserve of an elite media clique and even the weak and oppressed can find a voice.

If ordinary folk sit on the sidelines for fear of transgressing laws they don't understand or even know about then the old media elite and their oft corrupt ways will simply be replaced by a new media elite.

The online message will be dominated by those who understand the law and those who don't care about the law (through e.g. being based outside the UK or having nothing much to lose through any court action).

Neither of these voices will necessarily be representative of society as a whole.

The upshot of laws designed to keep the old print and broadcast media in check might be to extend their reign, with a few notable newcomers.

I don't mean to be completely dismissive of established news-gathering organisations, democracy would probably be weakened even if one of my most hated news outlets went under.

But I want to see the "comment agenda" snatched from the likes of the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Murdoch Press, etc and moved into the hands of real people. Instead of a millionaire paid by the Guardian telling me what it's like for a job-seeker on benefits I'd actually rather read it in a blog.

Yes, I *know* nothing discussed above prevents a blog on life as a job-seeker. But it will stifle the blog of an abuse victim, as it will someone treated unfairly by a corrupt organisation or politician.

In summary the "chilling effect" that many - especially in power - seem to dismiss as a mythical highbrow theory bandied around by free speech enthusiasts becomes reality when large sections of the population are afraid to participate in a debate for fear of not understanding the UK's laws on what you can and cannot say online.

Friday, 16 November 2012

I've thought long and hard about whether this post is irresponsible or in the public interest. I decided to publish, due to the numerous issues it raises.

The first thing to remember is that online, at a transaction level, there is no guaranteed way to ensure your online behaviour is untraceable. There's always a chance that someone with sufficient access to enough of the network might be able to link your actions to you.

No method of so-called online anonymisation is foolproof. In addition, your behaviour over time when using Twitter might give you away.

To use Twitter with minimum chance of being traced you need at least two things:

Access to the internet that cannot be linked to you, or anonymisation software such as TOR

A Twitter account that can't be linked to you

This may sound like stating the obvious but it's vital not to forget that a Twitter account you created using e.g. your home internet connection or an email address you used for other purposes can probably be linked back to you.

Thursday, 15 November 2012

Okay, it's very bad indeed to be falsely labelled a child abuser (yet not as bad as being abused, I'll get back to this later).

But in this particular case, with many days of headlines charting the subsequent implosion at the BBC, this false accusation was corrected in double quick time and in a rather spectacular fashion.

It's inconceivable that more than a handful of individuals would have seen the original allegation on Twitter yet missed the fallout.

So the overall reputational damage should be framed in this context. A few people for a short space of time heard through highly unreliable channels that the missing piece of the jigsaw laid out on BBC Newsnight was Lord McAlpine. A claim that was quashed within a week.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Someone interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme this morning claimed that, since the manipulation appears to have been an attempt to artificially lower the market price, consumers shouldn't have lost out.

But this is a gross over-simplification.

Markets are complex systems which take many input variables to arrive at what is meant to be the fair market price for a commodity like gas.

The price paid by the consumer for gas covers not just the wholesale cost of gas but also a mark-up added by the utility company to cover the cost of distribution and profit to shareholders.

Now, here's the important bit: profit. When a market works, competition between rivals keeps profits in check.

Energy companies should in theory be trying to undercut each other on the retail price charged to consumers in order to maximise market share, whilst minimising the price paid on the wholesale market to maximise their profit.

If a small number of utility traders learn how to rig the wholesale market in order to lower the price paid for gas; then traders who, for whatever reason, won't or can't rig the market will always end up paying more for their gas.

So the overall effect of manipulation to artificially lower prices may well be to reduce competition in the retail sector.

And because there's less competition it might be possible to increase the mark-up without losing customers.

So the overall effect of rigging the market in this way may be consumers pay more for gas whilst utility companies pay less - the winners: bumper bonuses for traders and increased dividends for shareholder.

There probably isn't enough data to draw conclusions from the above graphs but it certainly looks like there is an upward trend in the retail price that is not reflected in the wholesale price.

Of course the energy companies will moan about setting money aside for infrastructure upgrades and future investment, but if the market was competitive there should also be pressure on these companies to find more efficient ways of delivering energy.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

(In my previous post I used the term Truth Paradox, leading in a roundabout way to this post)

This sentence is false

This is the classic Liar Paradox. I was surprised to read philosophers still can't agree on a way out of this paradox... Having studied quantum physics the answer seems obvious.

The observer effect(often confused with the uncertainty principle - even by its discoverer Werner Heisenberg) means it is not possible to measure certain properties of some systems (especially of elementary quantum particles) without affecting the system in some way that alters what is being measured.

An object in a dark room - you can't see it without turning on a light.

At a non-quantum level the object could be a thermometer and the light a very powerful light. You can't read the temperature without the light, but in turning the light on you'll heat the thermometer.

If the object is truly minuscule the light photons themselves will alter the position and direction of the particle. Without the light you don't know where it is, and with the light you don't know where it was.

In some cases it is possible to negate the observer effect by calculating the exact effect the observer had on the system and working back. At a quantum level this is simply not possible when measuring some properties, leading to uncertainty.

Language itself has an observer effect. Language means nothing unless it can be understood by the observer.

In processing the text to understand what is written the observer's understanding of what is written can be altered by what is written.